First, it's doubtful how "Christian" a country America was to begin with. Countries don't have religions; people do. And if there has ever been a time when a majority of Americans were serious disciples of Jesus, it's a long time ago. More to the point, we as a people may recognize that we are sinners in principle. But as a practical matter, being one's own savior is the American way. We like to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps (or tell ourselves that we have) in the spiritual realm as well as in all the others. The theology of most of the popular American religious movements leaves little doubt of that, nor does our national religious history.

For most Americans, religion is pretty much what President Obama and the political Left seem to think it should be: something private, personal, and easy, involving no necessary sacrifice and having particular impact on one's behavior. Certainly, for most of us, it can involve nothing which might bring one into conflict with others. Religion, like politics, is something best not discussed. And increasing, religion is something Americans are even more ignorant about than they are about politics.

There was a time, at least, when churchgoers were biblically literate. At least marginally.

No, for Americans, religion is something to be trotted out for marriages, baptisms, funerals and other family occasions, to provide an increasingly rough structure for loose, pliable, and above all individualistic moral boundaries, and to provide often sappy, banal pseudo-comfort in times of trial through the trotting out of ill-understood but vaguely comforting clichés.

The second problem with the poll's findings is that there really is no such thing as an "atheist" or an "agnostic." Everybody has someone or something which he or she values above all else. Everybody has someone or something to whom (or to which) he or she turns when the chips are down and all else fails. Everybody has a "bottom line-" someone (or something) which is, without fail, to be "feared, loved and trusted above all things," in Luther's phrase.

I believe that in fact a majority of Americans- including those who claim to be atheists and agnostics, and even most of those who claim to be Christians or to adhere to some other religious tradition- in fact have the very same god. Rachel Held Evans's recent piece in the Washington Post in which she combines an admirable appreciation for historical liturgy with the plea for the Church to attract the Millennial generation by selling out to the culture on matters of sexual ethics is a perfect illustration of that dominant American faith in action.

And here is a video sample of what would be in that faith's hymnal, if it had one:

Let it be noted that the Christian God- unlike this one- doesn't allow us to make our religion up to suit ourselves as we go along.

Or to suit society or the government, either- or certainly the demands of political correctness.

Ms. Chamberlain, like me, voted for Evan McMullin in November. Like me, she holds no brief for Hillary Clinton or her agenda. But she cannot, as she put it, "throw roses at Hitler."

As I've said before, comparing Trump to Hitler strikes me as harsh. I believe that Trump is a power-hungry narcissist who exhibits disturbing signs of psychopathy, like Hitler. Like Hitler, he has stigmatized defenseless minorities- Muslims and undocumented aliens, rather than Jews- and made them scapegoats for the nation's troubles. Like Hitler, he has ridden a wave of irrational hatred and emotion to power. Like Hitler's, his agenda foreshadows disaster for the nation he has been chosen to lead.

Evan McMullin has devoted most of his post-college life- even to the point of foregoing marriage and a family- to fighting ISIS and al Qaeda and our nation's deadliest enemies as a clandestine officer for the CIA. He has done so at the risk of his life.

He has seen authoritarianism in action close-up. One of his main jobs overseas was to locate and facilitate the elimination of jihadist warlords. Evan McMullin knows authoritarians.

And when he looks at Donald Trump, what he sees is an authoritarian like the ones he fought overseas. He knows Donald Trump. After leaving the CIA he served as policy director for the Republican majority in the United States House of Representatives. He tells about his first encounter with The Donald in that role in this opinion piece he wrote for today's New York Times.

In fact, when Mitt Romney and Tom Coburn and all the others who were recruited to run as a conservative third-party candidate against Trump and Hillary Clinton backed out, McMulli…

This is a great idea for three reasons. First, private enterprise is the future of space exploration, and as far as I know we will be the first spacefaring nation to put most of its eggs in that basket. Second, it's nice to have eggs! Since the Obama administration canceled the Constellation program to develop the Ares booster and the Orion crew vehicle (though it subsequently reinstated the Orion part of the program), the United States has been twiddling its thumbs while China has taken great leaps toward the moon and other countries- including Russia, India, and Japan- have to various degrees intensified their own space programs. It would be both tragic and foolhardy for the nation which first…

Robert Elart Waters

,,,is a retired Lutheran minister who, except for his years in the ministry, has been a lifelong political activist who cannot be ideologically pigeonholed. He is a political independent and Neo-Moderate who believes that the incivility of our political discourse and the extremism and ideological rigidity of both political parties threatens our continued existence as a free people.